Bread upon the waters Book

This book is an ambitious attempt to chronicle the social entropy that can pull even loving people away from each other. The story follows Allen Strand, a New York City public high school history teacher, as he tries to negotiate the formidable challenges that circumstance visits on him. At the outset, his family unit is tightly knit--his 17 year old daughter, Caroline, still lives at home and the other two (slightly older) children, Jimmy and Eleanor, are in close contact--and Strand harbors a rather Utopian vision of both his family and his future.

A powerful lawyer-businessman named Russell Hazen comes into their lives after Caroline wards off an attack on him by some young thugs in Central Park. Taking advantage of the professional opportunities that connection with Hazen create, all of the children make choices that separate them--geographically and emotionally-- from the rest of the family. Jimmy's initial successes in the music business prompt him to move to California and to make some dubious moral choices that cause Strand to lose respect for him. Eleanor's journalistic "opportunity" lands her in serious physical danger. And Caroline's opportunities, which allow her to improve her appearance and attend college in Arizona, work changes in her that complete the fragmentation of the family.

On top of all of this, Strand suffers a sudden health blow (I won't give away the specifics) which greatly impacts his career and his relationship with his wife, Leslie. Her own new opportunities combined with Strand's changed circumstances cause a new kind of distance between them.

The book is, in some ways, an Eden story. Hazen appears to be offering opportunity--like the Serpent--but ultimately provides options that shatter the idyllic family unit that the Strands had enjoyed for so long.

This brings up the question of whether it is desirable or even possible to create an insular world that resists the intrusions of the larger universe. Hazen himself tries to do this by maintaining a mansion in the Hamptons and by cultivating a set of friends who will surround him whenever he is not working. In this respect, he calls to mind Jay Gatsby.

The gambit doesn't work for Hazen, however, any more than it does for Gatsby. We discover that his own family life is in shambles and the liaisons created between the different people in Hazen's social circle inexorably pull them all apart.

Ultimately, the reader senses that Shaw views insularity as an impossibility, especially in a modern universe where "wild cards" like Hazen, thugs and stress-related illnesses cannot be eliminated. Hazen is less a villain than the messages of a crass, commercial culture and the rise of a kind of individual ambition that seeks personal transcendence over communal cohesion.

It is not clear, though, how much of this indictment is Shaw's judgment and how much of it is Strand's. There is some authorial distance there, which suggests Shaw may view Strand with a both love and pity. Indeed, for most of the book, Strand looks like an anachronism who cannot adapt to the world he's just started to see with clarity.

Yet, at the end, Strand does find a way to deal with the dizzying entropy of his social web, deciding to recommit himself to the urban children he left (for private school) when his health problems arose. It seems as if Shaw is saying that this is all that's left to us, to find our own sources of meaning in what can be a lonely universe. The implication is that individualism in a technological age can take us anywhere, and thus the likelihood that a group of hearts--no matter how close--will pull in similar directions is very small.

It's a rather bleak view of human existence and while it is legitimate, it is arguably the paramount function of art to help us live better in our own skins. I'm not sure the book accomplishes that. While Strand and Leslie are still married at the end of the book, their relationship is greatly attenuated and it feels to the reader as through Strand is now embarking on a solitary quest. If Shaw's ultimate advice for living in a fragmented world is "if you can't beat them, join them"--in other words, just follow your own path for that's all that's left--it's pretty unsatisfying.

Such analysis may, however, give short shrift to the depth of Shaw's vision. Shaw's objective may be to show a man who ultimately is making moral choices--such as returning to a harder teaching environment for the chance to affect children who need him more than his prep school charges--with the full knowledge that providing opportunities can prompt the beneficiaries to move in unpredictable and even dangerous directions. By the end of the book, Strand has failed in his own experiment as a benefactor--having facilitated, with Hazen's help, private school attendance for an angry, but brilliant student Strand taught in New York, only to see the boy expelled for attacking a fellow student with a knife-- and yet, Strand does not submit to cynicism. "I have failed with one," he writes in his diary, "but perhaps it has taught me how not to fail with others."

Looked at in this way, the book is more hopeful, suggesting that even in the face of outrageous fortune and with reason to doubt the outcome of our efforts, we can choose to do what's right and noble. Shaw may be saying that in those moments, we achieve our closest connection to God, who by dint of free will, can only offer chances to us but not control the outcome of our choices. That is an inspiring possibility, although the overall vision of transcendence still seems disturbingly solitary.

The book suffers from some writing flaws which detract from the reading experience. For example, the changes in emotional dynamics in the story often happen too fast and we are told that they are happening more than shown them. Furthermore, the prose is rarely lyrical or beautiful.

Still, the book does a good job of showing how stunningly complex human relationships can be and how difficult it is to stay true to individual principles when one achieves a certain level of power. Hazen breaks rules and suffers mightily for it, Caroline flaunts the power she achieves with her new appearance, Leslie separates herself geographically from Strand when she discovers the power of her artistic talent and Jimmy discards "old" moral values when his music opportunity arises.

The idea that unchecked individualism plus the power to realize our dreams lead us to be lonely "successes" is not exactly new, but the notion that there is a value equal to self-actualization is probably an important one for America in 2008. For that reason, and Shaw's achievement in chronicling the social entropy that befalls the Strand family, I felt the book merited four stars.